My First Introduction to Spirituality

“It was like riding in a spaceship being pinned to your seat, going through turbulence, until it finally exits the atmosphere and all becomes still and life becomes weightless– effortless even.”

My spiritual journey, as many other teachers have experienced, began with intense asking and (self-created) suffering. This searching for self and the true essence of life was born out of an enormous desire to find meaning and purpose amidst chaos. I do want to emphasize that I don’t see that struggle as something that is of much importance, so I won’t be spending much time going back and elaborating about that aspect. It was just a stepping stone to get me to the understanding that I currently have.

I began this new path (consciously) at the age of nineteen. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the events I’ve experienced were only meant as a catalyst to bring me into a deeper state of awareness. It was like riding in a spaceship being pinned to your seat, going through turbulence, until it finally exits the atmosphere and all becomes still and life becomes weightless– effortless even.

I grew up in a Christian home, one where religion was not of huge importance until we were experiencing turmoil. It was less of a lifestyle and more like a plea to someone outside of us to fix something that we deemed to be broken or wrong. At that age, I perceived God to be like a father, but not a loving one, more like a father that you had to be on your best behavior around or else he’d tell you you weren’t good enough (send you to hell if you were bad enough). A judge. It was fear based, and there was no teaching (by the people who taught me) of real and actual unconditional love or how to live a life that included happiness. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I was introduced to ideas of how to use my mind in a productive way–how to plant seeds of greater happiness and joy, that would then manifest my outer circumstances.

There’s a quote I’ve heard that goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” That really encompasses my journey’s beginning. In 2015 I was more than ready, I was hungry for meaning, and thirsty for joy. I was being pinned to my spaceship seat of life and unexpectedly, about to exit the atmosphere.

There was one man, who sat at the front of our class, that I felt very drawn to throughout the semester. He didn’t speak much but something about him intrigued me. It didn’t occur to me why, until he presented his final presentation.

He stood up in front of our English class and spoke of vibrations, Albert Einstein, energy, and the power of music to heal. He then went on to play his guitar to the class and sing to us, and instructed us all to really pay attention to how music made us feel. Throughout this whole presentation, I had chills shooting through my body as if it were telling me “this is true!”. I left that class feeling the most calm and clear-headed that I had felt in a long time.

My life was about to take me down an unexpected–and fulfilling– journey. I went on to search online about vibration, healing, and miracles. It felt like I’d had a blindfold on my whole life, and someone came and ripped it off to show me what it meant to really see.

Soon after, I came across a woman named Esther Hicks. She became my first introduction to “The Law of Attraction”. To me this was a profound discovery because I was never aware that psychics and channels, or contact with non-physical was a real thing. It made so much sense to me that we (humans) are made of energy and that our thoughts emit vibrations that create our physical circumstances. I had a newfound joy, a burning passion, a desire to understand what lies beyond physical. I wanted to understand what the truth was, about where I originated and if it’s possible to talk to this (non-physical) world.

“Rely not on the teacher/person, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on thespirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because youhave heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Donot believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it iswritten in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers andelders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and isconducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

– The Buddha

I believe that no human has the capacity to fully describe non-physical, or God and all of it’s aspects. I don’t claim to know all spiritual truths or even that my truths are actual truths. I can only go based off of how hearing something makes me feel, and the ideas of the Law of Attraction, energy, and the power of the mind to create have become my truths. It feels to me like truth, and it proves itself to me time and time again in my own real life experiences. I encourage you to find your truth, to listen with an open heart, and only take with you the little pieces that resonate, that feel like a truth, to you.